May 2011

How to Draw Huge Traffic with a Website Party

As a real estate professional you know that you must have a website. There are many options for creating a website, such as a company sponsored site, a custom website, or a real estate website template with hosting. Regardless of where it came from, how do you get visitors to your site now that you have one? I say, let’s throw a party and invite them!

Here are five steps that you can do immediately that will bring more buyers and sellers to your website. And more importantly, these steps will keep them coming back for more! Think of this as getting ready for a big party!

1. Clean house for your guests: Be sure your website is search ready, or what is referred to as “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO for short. In a nutshell this means to have keywords on your website that visitor’s will be searching for when looking for a home for sale, or sellers might search for when looking for an agent. You can add these words to the website directly, such as in the introduction, in the articles on your site and also into the “Meta Tags”. If you are not sure what this means, you may want to get some help with this one from your website developer or office guru.

2. Create an Event: You probably wouldn’t invite your friends or associates over for a party without proper preparation or planning. And if you did, and they got bored, would you expect them to come back for the next party? Probably not. So, you might think about food, games, and activities that will entertain your guests. Let’s treat our website the same way. We need to have valuable content on our website to entertain, educate, provide a valuable service, or all of the above. Add neighborhood updates, property information, charity events, anything that has a value to your potential guests. We want to offer enough value to keep them coming back for more, again and again!

3. Write the invitations: You can’t expect people to show up at your party if you have not invited them, right? The best way to invite people is to write articles or blogs on one of the highly trafficked real estate blog sites such as RealTown, ActiveRain, or Trulia (or any other with high traffic volume). These are usually free or with a premium subscription for higher visibility. It’s well worth it!

4. Get Social: Use virtual tours on all your listings with links to your website. Add one of your neighborhood videos to your virtual tour. Add personal narration to the virtual tour and mention your website for more information. Create a YouTube video. Add a “widget” on your site with links to all your virtual tours. Or better yet, find a virtual tour service that utilizes the latest technologies, social media, social networking, and integrates these services in an easy to use platform so you aren’t spending a lot of time learning something new on top of everything else. After all, it’s your party and you want to enjoy it along with your guests, right?

5. It’s party time! When your guests arrive, you want to offer refreshments and let them look around. You want them to get comfortable and enjoy themselves so they want to come back again. You can offer the typical Home Search and Information for Buyers and Sellers, but let’s also offer them something special and unique. Add some local flare, where to dine with reviews by yourself or even your guests, and maybe a video of the neighborhood or the parks, libraries, schools. Add your own personal video welcome!

And when the party is over, don’t let your guests leave without something to bring them back the next time. You can offer a “Custom Property List” or “Hot List” of fresh homes on the market if they are home buyers, or you can offer them a “Neighborhood Newsletter” or your next “By Invite Only –Open House” event. How about an Ice Cream Social at the neighborhood park? Be sure they “check back often” for your announcements. And by all means, don’t let them down! Keep content on your site fresh, update it weekly and stay connected. It’s your party, be a good host and your guests will come back for more every time!

Remember, the most recent National Association of Realtors statistics show over 90 percent of home buyers said they looked online for their home before purchasing! Are they looking at your website?

Reasons For Qualifying the Buyer

Thoroughly qualifying Buyers is really the most important factor in deciding whether or not to work with a prospect. I also find that too many Agents err in judgment by working with lower probability prospects than they should. We often are more willing to work with lower probability prospects because they are all we currently have. We work them in hopes that their motivation, time frame, commitment level, and even financial qualifications will change. This investment in low probability prospects is at best, optimistic thinking and at worst, delusional.

The objective of qualifying can be segmented into four categories.

1. Separate qualified and non-qualified prospects.

The faster we can separate qualified from non-qualified, the more resources we save for other prospects. We must design our qualifying process with the objective of quickly separating these two groups.

2. Eliminate or refer non-qualified prospects.

Being able to remove or disengage with non-qualified prospects frees you up to work with or find better qualified prospects. As you reach the Champion level in skills, ability, and mindset, you open the possibility of referring prospects. Maybe these prospects don’t meet your standard for clients, but they might meet another Agent’s. Those other Agents might be willing to work with lower quality, longer time frame, or lower motivation prospects. Don’t automatically throw a lead away if it doesn’t meet your personal standard. Start by referring this business to people in your office. Then, if you feel this is happening frequently (I would define frequently as around 4 to 6 times a month, depending on the convertibility of the leads), you might need to consider starting your journey to build a team.

3. Trade commitments with qualified prospects.
In the risk and reward arena of real estate sales, the exchange of commitments is the cornerstone of compensation. We set up that exchange of commitments at the qualifying stage. This is especially true with a Buyer. Sellers have been educated that they must be exclusive to a Real Estate Agent, but there are still many Buyers who don’t feel the need or haven’t been show the benefit of an exclusive relationship with an Agent to represent their needs and interests. Through qualifying, we need to determine their willingness to exchange commitments or exclusivity for our service.

4. Provide counsel to qualified, committed prospects.
On the last of these four steps, we begin to enter the servicing part of our relationship with the prospect that has now turned into a client.

Our fear of prospecting can shape our decision to work leads that are lower grade. Because we have leads, we excuse ourselves from prospecting for the day, week, or longer. We focus so much on a lead (or a few of them) that, when they don’t pan out, we put ourselves in dire straights quickly. We end up wasting our time with people with a low return. The time we invest is really the opportunity cost of the real estate business. In evaluating the Buyer opportunities, we find that a typical Buyer will, on average, take 3 to 4 times more investment of our time than a Seller.

I often ask audiences when I try to drive this point home, “If you have a $300,000 Seller and a $300,000 Buyer, which do you make more money from?” The shout from the audience is always the same: “THE BUYER!” I usually ask them again, and a few start to get it. The truth is the commission dollars are the same; the difference is in the time you must invest to earn the income. The variable is the time in the analysis.

The quickest way, when working with Buyers, to determine their qualifications and motivation isn’t asking them all of the qualifying questions. The quickest way to determine their motivation is to ask for an appointment. The last place on earth a low motivation Buyer wants to be is in front of a salesperson. If you don’t want to buy a car, do you want to go to a car dealership and talk with a salesperson? For most of us, that’s the last experience we want in life.

No matter the indication you get on their motivation and probability of doing business with you or any Agent, you must ask them for an appointment. Every prospect you meet must be driven to a face-to-face meeting or presentation. A qualified Buyer prospect has to meet your requirements to work with you. Are they worthy of your investment of professional resources?